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[arch-general] Boot sequence stops at modules (rc.sysinit)
by Stephen Wilkinson 04 Mar '08

04 Mar '08

Hello everyone, After upgrading the kernel alone (and after fixing some kernel panics -- see postscript) the boot sequence now stops at loading the modules ([DONE]) and goes no further: the cursor blinks and I can type characters, but I never get a shell prompt. It seems the boot sequence doesn't go beyond rc.sysinit The only reference I found to a similar problem is in the forum: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=323775 where it was suggested to try the fallback image and removing modules from the rc.conf. I've tried both, but hasn't helped (as expected: the kernel loads properly, so not an ramdisk problem, and the modules also load as I get [DONE] status...). Before this problem, I knew nothing at all about the boot sequence in linux so I read this: http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/The_Linux_Boot_Sequence Please correct me if I've misunderstood: after loading the kernel, the boot sequence gets to the init stage, and rc.sysinit is executed -- which, according to my '/etc/rc.sysinit' ends with loading of modules... but what happens next? I've looked at /etc/inittab but I don't understand how the sequence of events (and scripts) is specified. I tried booting into different run levels (adding 1 or 3 to the kernel line of grub), but it makes no difference. Because I don't get to a login prompt, I resorted to using a live CD to mount my root partition and tinker with /etc/rc.sysinit ... although I admit I don't know what I'm doing. I thought that maybe the initscripts package should have been upgraded at the same time as the kernel. In summary, what I've tried: - used a live CD to edit rc.conf (disable modules), and checked there was nothing in rc.local -- made no difference - tried booting with fallback image -- made no difference (didn't think it would as the kernel loads properly) -- made no difference - used a live CD to tinker with /etc/rc.sysinit but don't know what I'm doing, and it seems to complete successfully anyway, as all modules are loaded (status says [DONE]) - tried entering run level 1 by appending 1 to my Grub kernel line -- made no difference Is there a way to bypass what comes between the end of rc.sysinit (i.e. loading the modules) and the login prompt, so that I can at least log in and then try to fix the problem? In other words, how do I find out what happens after rc.sysinit and disable it? Thanks, Steve P.S: in case it's relevant, here is a summary of the kernel panics I got after upgrading the kernel and rebooting: After kernel upgrade I got kernel panics because I hadn't changed initrd26.img to kernel26.img and /dev/hda5 to /dev/sda5 in Grub's menu.lst (as you can see I hadn't upgraded for a long time, and didn't pay enough attention to the upgrade messages). Having done that, I then had to correct /etc/fstab for the same /dev/hda5 mistake. Finally the kernel booted properly, but the sequence stops at loading modules.

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[arch-general] Kernel ext2 driver
by Keith 03 Mar '08

03 Mar '08

On Sun, 02 Mar 2008 at 13:41:46 +0100, Jan de Groot <jan(a)jgc.homeip.net> wrote: > On Sat, 2008-03-01 at 20:50 -0600, Dan McGee wrote: > > Your entire rest of statement was valid, but why on earth did you make > > a claim like this? I have to speak up and say something here. ext2 is > > nowhere near dead. I use it on my /boot partition on every Linux > > install, and every filesystem on my Eee is currently ext2. Hardly > > dead- unless "stable as hell" = dead. > > Ext2 is stable as hell, so is ext3. The point is that nowadays almost nobody wants to use a filesystem without journal, that's why I consider it dead. If journalling wasn't important (and if I didn't need filesizes bigger than 2 or 4GB), then FAT32 wouldn't be a dead filesystem either. Ext3 is basically just Ext2 with an added journal, so that's why Ext2 is still developed and supported. ??? First off, FAT32 is a native Linux filesystem??? AND it's dead??? I haven't used it in, maybe, years, but I do have one box for my printers/scanners with only Win98 or WinXP drivers. It would be nice to know I COULD dual-boot it and access the FAT32 partition(s), at least. Thought that's why it was there? I *never* use ext3, for anything. I've used ReiserFS, JFS, XFS. They all have advantages in particular situations. Ext3 seems to me a 'catch-all' not optimized (and, thus, NON-optimal) for any situation. However, for ALL my installs, I have a separate /boot partition - and it's ALWAYS ext2. ALWAYS. I guess I'm "almost nobody" - but who needs a journaling FS for /boot? As my /boot is generally in the 32-64MB range, the journal would take up virtually the entire FS (obviously, meaning I'd need a larger /boot partition, or else needlessly complicate the /boot partition creation; it's brainless as it is now). Last time I checked, /boot has no need (nor will it at ANY POINT in the forseeable future) for 2GB+ files or filesystems. I agree completely with Dan here. I'm FAR from a pro on Linux, but why this is even an issue of contention is going over my head...this all seems pretty simple, and pretty obvious, even to ME; pretty simply = ext2. KISS, right? Sincerely, Keith

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[arch-general] Firefox PGO builds
by Emmanuel Benisty 01 Mar '08

01 Mar '08

Hi Arch-General, Further to the /. discussion about PGO Firefox builds [ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/27/2049258 ], I decided to give it a try out of curiosity. I just simply followed the instructions of Mozilla website about PGO builds [ http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Building_with_Profile-Guided_Optimizat… ] using an up-to-date CVS tree. So I just have few questions about this: - Is Arch planning to provide PGO builds once FF3 is released ? - Did anyone try to build FF3 wih PGO ? If yes, how did you manage to build it as user ? Using the 'default process' will require root privilege otherwise it will fail because of a simple permission problem. (firefox-bin:8960): libgnomevfs-WARNING **: Unable to create ~/.gnome2 directory: Permission denied Could not create per-user gnome configuration directory `/root/.gnome2/': Permission denied make: *** [profiledbuild] Error 1 ==> ERROR: Build Failed. Aborting... To launch FF between the 2 builds, I used the simple script of the mozilla doc (Cf. link above): #!/bin/sh export NO_EM_RESTART=1 mkdir $OBJDIR/_profileprofile $OBJDIR/dist/bin/firefox -no-remote -profile $OBJDIR/_profileprofile As root, everything is working as expected. The point is that running FF (to 'build' the profile) as root is really something that I would like to avoid for obvious reasons. Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestion/advice.

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[arch-general] Anyone using fprint for authentication ?
by Alper KANAT 01 Mar '08

01 Mar '08

Hey There, I want to use my fingerprint scanner to login through GDM and GNOME Screensaver... I can do this right now partially... It always asks for my password which is maybe secure but annoying at the same time.. I want to use fingerprint login first and if it fails then I want to use password login.. Any ideas for how to do this ? I'm trying this in GNOME Screensaver but it asks for the password whenever I slide my finger on the scanner.. -- Alper KANAT http://raptiye.org

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[arch-general] where is kde 3.5.9 ?
by solsTiCe d'Hiver 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

hi kde 3.5.9 is out since the 19th february i was used to have the latest kde release the day before the offical release on arch ! now we are almost 10 days after the official release and nothing. what's happening ? even if arch switch to kde 4 (too soon for me) i prefer to wait Kde 4.1 will we have a kde 3.5.9 release in arch ?

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[arch-general] Missing man pages
by Mordechai Peller 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

I notice that some of the man pages are missing, including: find, cat, ls, uniq, tee, and tail. They were in man-pages-2.74-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz, but not man-pages-2.77-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz or man-pages-2.78-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz. Was there any reason they where removed? Thanks

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[arch-general] Help!Can anyone be so nice to share the Purevoice Linux SDK?
by yueyu lin 28 Feb '08

28 Feb '08

Hi, all If you're the voice codec developers, you may know Qualcomm closed the Purevoice SDK downloads since Dec 31,2007. As I don't save a copy of that and cannot see any signs Qualcomm will re-open it soon, can anyone who has the SDK to share with me? I don't think it will violate any laws cause Qualcomm used to open downloads and even Qualcomm's brew SDK is free. Thanks in advance. Any help will be highly appreciated! -- -- Yueyu Lin

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[arch-general] Tk707. Problems getting sounds out of it (Don't Panic)
by Nigel Henry 27 Feb '08

27 Feb '08

Looking for available audio apps, I installed tk707. There were some problems when starting it from the CLI (couldn't find shared libraries) as below. [djmons@myhost ~]$ tk707 /usr/bin/tk707bin: error while loading shared libraries: libtk8.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [djmons@myhost ~]$ tk707bin tk707bin: error while loading shared libraries: libtk8.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [djmons@myhost ~]$ su Password: \[root@myhost djmons]# ln -s /usr/lib/libtk8.5.so /usr/lib/libtk8.4.so [root@myhost djmons]# exit exit [djmons@myhost ~]$ tk707 /usr/bin/tk707bin: error while loading shared libraries: libtcl8.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [djmons@myhost ~]$ su Password: [root@myhost djmons]# ldconfig [root@myhost djmons]# tk707 /usr/bin/tk707bin: error while loading shared libraries: libtcl8.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [root@myhost djmons]# ln -s /usr/lib/libtcl8.5.so /usr/lib/libtcl8.4.so [root@myhost djmons]# exit As you can see, I created a couple of symlinks, and then starting tk707 again, opened the ports selection window. So far so good. I've got an Audigy2 soundblaster on this machine, and need to load a soundfont to use the hardware synth. I looked for the awesfx package, and jacman shows version 0.5.0d-2 available from the community repo, but installing it with jacman failed (couldn't find the package). I also tried pacman -S awesfx, but again the package couldn't be found. The community repo is uncommented in /etc/pacman.conf, and pacman -Sy shows it on the list of updated databases. Any suggestions as to how I can get the awesfx package? I could use TiMidity to get sounds out of tk707, or Qsynth (If it's available), but being able to load the soundfont for my card is preferable. Thanks for any help, suggestions. Nigel.

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[arch-general] Concurrent java environments
by Ondřej Kučera 27 Feb '08

27 Feb '08

Hello, I was wondering - why jre/jdk packages conflict with java-gcj-compat? Unless I missed something there are no file conflicts (since jre and jdk are in /opt) and I think the rest (switching between the environments when necessary) could be done be (re)setting of environment variables (such as $PATH and $JAVA_HOME). Or am I overlooking something? Being a java developer (at least from time to time) I am in need of Sun implementation (actually even of version 6), on the other hand on x86_64 the webplugin from gcc-gcj in combination with java-gcj-compat is the only way to run some applets (e. g. those that need security certificates; for other applets only gcc-gcj might be enough). Ondřej -- Cheers, Ondřej Kučera

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[arch-general] Packages without license field in official repos
by Xavi Soler 26 Feb '08

26 Feb '08

My intention is to know the number of non-free packages installed on my system. In Debian I can use 'vrms' [1]. I think Arch has nothing similar, but I can start programming an application like 'vrms' (maybe using libalpm or calling pacman directly). My first test has been typing: $ pacman -Q | pacman -Qi | less and reading carefully the license fields: most (BSDs and MITs specially) say 'custom'. The big problem I've found is that, quite often, I read the word 'none' there, but I can't understant how can it happen in packages stored in official repos. There are a lot of packages without license field. I could do a heavy research to know which packages include a license field and which don't, and then warn their mantainers. But it would be a waste of time. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrms -- Blog: http://interrupciones.net

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